Query: are there key maps for controlling the steam brake and vacuum brake separately? It seems the risk of derailment could be appreciably reduced if one could start braking the wagons before applying the fast-acting loco brake.
Looking at the lever in the cab, it has a ramp that actuates the steam brake as you work the lever, it is possible to work the steam brake separately but not the vac brake independently from the steam brake.
I’m not sure how protobical this is, but here is something I do to essentially “bail” the loco brake. I apply small amount of brake with the combined handle. Make sure the large ejector is off. Then, immediately after releasing the brake, I turn off the small ejector. At this point, I have a train brake application due to diminished vacuum, but nothing in the brake cylinder of the loco. I can then feather the train brake with small adjustments to the small ejector, all done without applying the loco brake.
About the braking, how can the brake van use the brakes when it is at the end of an unfitted train, with the unfitted train we have in the game, there is not even a pipe on the unfitted wagon to get the vacuum to the brake van.
No, it simply uses it’s own brakes and the weight of the van itself, brakes are applied using the handbrake wheel inside the brake van. The rest is down to the force of friction. If you look outside the van at the platform at each end, these are huge concrete weights! Not like modern railways at all, but that’s how it was done! ChessieT
It’s worth reading the post by stewartforgie in the Freight Problem thread. He was a BR freight guard; and gives a first hand idea of how railways operated in a pre-technological Britain! Where human skill and experience counted for everything!!! ChessieT
Just like other wagons, some brake vans were fitted with a vacuum brake some were piped and some were unfitted. On fitted and piped brake vans there was a lever to operate the vacuum brake.
Just for added interest, A Freight guard back in the day would have completed one of these Journals for every trip he made.
i do hope it does nothing on the train in question, as there would be no way to get the vacuum from the loco up front producing the vacuum, to the guards van at the back with unfitted wagons in-between.
